Can We Talk about Race?: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation (16 page)

Another example comes from a student who sent me an e-mail message about transferring to Spelman. She wrote:

I was able to identify with many of the points that you made. In fact I am one of the exact products of your book. I went through the entire experience in my high school. I had what most people would have considered then to be a diverse reality; however, in many areas having a decent mix of people just wasn’t enough. Our cafeteria was divided in half, with Blacks on the left and Whites on the right, and so were all of the events like games, pep rallies, etc. The Black people gathered together for many of the reasons that you discussed in your book. We were a support group, we were large enough, and we had a “voice.” Many of us held positions in which we could input our ideas about policy and about administrative decisions.

However, I am now a sophomore at [a historically White college in a southern city], and I am in a similar situation. The only difference between my college and high school experience is that now I am battling segregation along with racism from the administration, faculty, and the students, while trying to obtain a degree simultaneously. The Black people who attend my school do not have a voice, and we operate on a day to day basis in an environment that is resistant to change and consciously racist. This environment has stalled my growth on many levels, and the worst part of all is that I am a Gates Millennium Scholar, meaning that I can go anywhere in the U.S. and have my tuition paid for in full. So, I am sure that you will understand me when I say that I would rather not put my scholarship money into an institution that is not facilitating my growth. All of these points bring me to my final dilemma. Everything that I lack at this institution, support as a Black female and a facilitated learning environment, I know that I can find at Spelman. I believe that I am qualified, and have a great deal to contribute to the college and community.

That student did indeed transfer successfully to Spelman. We must support those learning environments that continue to foster the achievement of those who have been historically marginalized even as we work to improve learning environments for students of color across the spectrum of education. It has been my goal throughout my career to help institutions like the one described above to become healthier places for both students of color
and
their fellow White students. That is still my goal even as I work to ensure the strength of Spelman College and other institutions like it.
It is not an “either-or” choice, it is a “both-and” solution
.

I want to come back to the ABC’s of creating inclusive environments that I described in
Chapter 1
—affirming identity, building community, and cultivating leadership, three critical dimensions of effective learning environments in which students feel invested and engaged, not just during the college years but through all levels of education.

AFFIRMING IDENTITY
. As noted in
Chapter 1
, it is often harder for those students who have been historically marginalized in our culture to see themselves reflected positively in school. This continues to be true at many predominantly White colleges and universities, and the demand for ethnic studies courses on campuses around the United States can be understood in part as a need for one’s presence to be acknowledged in the institution. The establishment of cultural centers is another common approach to addressing the need to affirm marginalized identities on predominantly White campuses. Along with the specialized programming that is often based in such centers, they provide a physical location to which students can briefly retreat from campus environments that, despite an institution’s best efforts, are alienating at times.

BUILDING COMMUNITY
. Students also need to sense that they belong to a larger, shared campus community, and some observers argue that while the existence of cultural centers and related programs affirm identity, they work against building community, encouraging separation rather than the cross-group engagement we seek. As paradoxical as it may seem, the opposite is more often the case. Students who feel that their own needs for affirmation have been met are more willing and able to engage with others across lines of difference. When an important need is met, we don’t have to spend energy pursuing it. Rather we can use our energy to push ourselves academically and socially. Most of us are more willing to engage in the often-taxing work of crossing social borders when we are operating from strength. Affirming identity is not contradictory to but a prerequisite for building community. Learning to build community, to think inclusively, to cross borders, is both a challenge and a benefit of being part of a diverse campus community.

The challenge at many institutions is that there are not enough structured opportunities for the affirmation of identity or for border-crossing conversations to take place. Interestingly, cultural centers can serve both purposes. For example, when my oldest son was a freshman at Wesleyan University, he chose to live in the Malcolm X House, a cultural center with residential capacity for about thirty students. At the end of his first year, in the spring of 2001, he asked me if I would come to Wesleyan to facilitate a dialogue, not for the Black students alone, but a campus-wide dialogue to be held at the Malcolm X House. I tried to talk him out of it, because it was the end of the semester and I imagined that everyone would be studying for exams and there would be limited participation. He assured me that it was very important to him, and that he was confident that the gathering would be well attended. I agreed to come, and indeed my son was right. The large lounge in the Malcolm X House was packed with a very diverse group of students. Clearly they were hungry for dialogue, and the Malcolm X House was the perfect place for it to happen. For some White students, it probably felt like entering foreign territory, but it provided the opportunity to risk some discomfort in a way that could foster the kind of growth that Gurin and her colleagues described. And a larger sense of shared purpose was emerging through their dialogue—they were building a multiracial community.

Although during the conversation some White students questioned the value of cultural centers like the Malcolm X House, I thought about what a benefit it had been to my son, who had grown up in a predominantly White community, to have the opportunity to immerse himself in the social milieu of the house, even as he continued to experience the mostly White learning environment of his daily coursework.
Because
of his experience in the Malcolm X House, not in spite of it, he was getting exactly what he wanted and needed during that first year at Wesleyan. As his own needs for affirmation were met, he began to emerge as a leader in the larger campus community. Organizing the year-end dialogue was just one manifestation of that developing leadership. Although I did not have the opportunity for follow-up conversations with the White students at Wesleyan, one of my former students at Mount Holyoke College shared these reflections about her ventures into campus spaces where she was in the minority:

Creating opportunities to master one’s fear of difference should be a part of the college experience, and that can happen at any kind of institution.

CULTIVATING LEADERSHIP
. Leadership in the twenty-first century not only requires the ability to think critically and speak and write effectively, it also demands the ability to interact effectively with others from different backgrounds. The development of each of these abilities requires opportunities to practice. The Intergroup Relations (IGR) Program at the University of Michigan is an excellent model of one successful strategy. This multifaceted program offers a course for first-year students that incorporates five key conditions: the presence of diverse others, a change from pre-college experiences, equality among peers, discussion under guidelines of civil discourse, and normalization and negotiation of conflict. In addition to the usual lectures, readings, and papers, the students participate in face-to-face intergroup dialogues. Heterogeneous groups of students are brought together to engage one another in active discussion of often controversial topics, confronting multiple points of view in the process, and fostering the capacity for the perspective-taking needed for collaborative problem-solving.
¹¹
The student facilitators who are trained to lead these discussion groups emerge with a sophisticated understanding of group dynamics and well-honed leadership abilities. Everyone benefits from the practice.

Whether at a historically Black college or a predominantly White institution, we all must ask ourselves, “How do we create and sustain educational environments that affirm identity, build community, and cultivate leadership in ways that support the learning of all students?” Translating the ABC’s into action requires us to routinely ask one another important questions: Who is reflected in our environment? Who is missing from the picture? What opportunities exist for building community, for encouraging dialogue across difference? How are students involved so that they are honing leadership skills in a diverse context?

At Spelman, though 97 percent of our students are racially categorized as “Black,” the student body is, in fact, quite diverse. Spelman students come from all regions of the United States and many foreign countries, from White suburban and rural communities as well as urban Black ones. All parts of the African Diaspora are represented, and the variety of experience and perspectives among the women who attend the college creates many opportunities for important dialogue. There is a developmental moment in the lives of young people of color when “within group” dialogue can be as important, or perhaps even sometimes more important, than “between group” dialogue. And, even in the context of a historically Black college, it is possible to create opportunities for both.

For example, at Spelman, an institution with deep Christian roots, I acknowledge the significant presence of Muslim students on our campus by cohosting with the Dean of the Chapel an iftar (a “break the fast” meal) during Ramadan for Muslim faculty, students, staff, and their guests. We have developed a program for interfaith dialogue as a way to address the religious diversity within our population of Black students, and have created occasional opportunities for interethnic dialogue among African, African American, and Afro-Caribbean students through our Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement. For many years, the Spelman College Women’s Research and Resource Center has been a location on campus that fosters important and challenging conversations about racial and gender equity, heterosexism and homophobia, and the role of Black women as agents of change, through coursework, featured guest speakers, and workshops throughout the year. These few examples illustrate multiple points of entry—curricular and cocurricular—into conversations that will help students challenge their own assumptions and help prepare them for leadership in a diverse world.

In our efforts to foster student capacity to connect with others across lines of difference as a critical component of leadership development, we must remember that timing is important. Our students will need time to practice these skills—and their time with us is short, which means we should begin from the moment they arrive on campus. Orientation is a natural starting point, as new students are meeting one another and also learning about the values of the institution. If inclusive values are important, that should be apparent from the very beginning.

For example, when I served as dean at Mount Holyoke College, I had oversight of our orientation planning. My staff and I struggled to bring together a diverse group of first-year students, many of whom were international students. We wanted to both affirm the identities of students who literally came from all over the world, and also build a shared sense of community. We experimented with asking students to bring something from home that represented their culture to be used in a small group exercise on the first day of orientation. We learned however that some White students from the United States were completely stumped by this request because they believed they did not have a culture. They could see that students of color and international students had a culture to share, but their own culture was invisible to them. If we are to engage with one another as equals, we all have to have something to bring to the table—and surprisingly, some White students did not feel they had anything to bring.

With this in mind, the following year we tried a different approach—a poetry exercise developed by the educator Linda Christensen that can be done with little advance preparation.
¹²
Using the stem “I am from” for each stanza, we asked students to describe familiar items found around their homes, sights, sounds, and smells from their neighborhoods, names of foods and dishes enjoyed at special family gatherings, familiar family sayings, and names of relatives or other important people who are a link to their past. The act of writing the poems helped to make each student’s culture visible, not only to others but also to herself. To illustrate this exercise, here are some sample verses of my own poem: